The invention relates to packaging for shipping and dispensing products. More particularly, the invention relates to packaging for dispensing cylindrical product, preferably core paper based items such as paper towels and toilet tissue, in a combination shipping and dispensing container.
Manufacturers typically ship products, especially paper products or products packaged in small boxes, in light weight cardboard containers, known as regular slotted containers (RSCs). These are very common, and a visit to almost any retail store indicates how ubiquitous these containers are. RSCs are manufactured from many different types of paperboard materials, each with their own load carrying characteristics. Additionally, these RSCs can be printed with decorative printing, operating as advertisement for the products contained within.
The end users of RSCs, the store owners, desire to maximize usage of their floor and storage space. Storage space is valuable real estate that does not directly earn the store owner money. While having excess inventory on hand can be important, especially if demand is high, all the product stored in storage areas represents an investment in money by the store owner. This inventory is typically not immediately available to the consumer to provide sales opportunities to the store owner. Indeed such excess inventory can actually cause the store owner to incur additional cost to store the inventory and then move the merchandise from the storage area and onto the floor where consumers can encounter it. Therefore, store owners have taken to storing product on the floor in their original RSCs to be immediately accessed by the consumer. For example, in some industries, there are free standing floor displays that utilize 15 count RSC designs. This means that the RSCs are stacked 15 units high. Unfortunately, presently available RSCs are not specifically designed to efficiently and effectively dispense the product they contain. The RSCs of the prior art must have their flaps opened, which does not present an aesthetically pleasing display for the consumer. These flaps or portions of the RSC can be cut-away with a knife to allow the product contained therein to be retrieved. Cutting away portions of the RSC may lead to loss of product through accidental knife-cutting damage to the product. The acts of opening closed flaps and cutting away portions of the RSC and the loss of product through damage are deficiencies that represent monetary losses to the store owner. It can even lead to future lost sales where consumers are not pleased with the shopping environment and begin to frequent other stores to purchase items shipped in such RSCs.
Other industries that use RSCs include the hotel industry and the commercial cleaning industry. In the hotel industry, there are small storage spaces, and the cleaning personnel must move products to multiple locations easily and without distraction. The same requirements apply to commercial restroom facility cleaners. The personnel whose task it is to clean restrooms need to get small carts in the restrooms to clean them while minimizing the possibility of dropping supplies on the floor. Similarly, it would be beneficial if personnel could store certain supplies in limited areas adjacent to the restrooms so that users of the restroom facilities could easily access certain products, without the hotel or commercial restroom facility owner having to pay the additional personnel costs to restock these items in the restrooms. Moving product in the original RSC, in both the hotel and cleaning industries, appears to save time and make the operation more efficient. This is somewhat deceiving because use of the prior art RSCs in this manner suffers some of the same deficiencies that those in the retail outlet industry experience, plus additional difficulties. For example, cleaning and hotel industry personnel will also open the RSC with a knife that can lead to product damage and waste. Furthermore, even if the product is not damaged, spillage from carts is possible with prior art RSCs as they are clumsy and inefficient in dispensing product. These deficiencies lead to inefficiencies in completing the tasks, leading to larger labor costs.
As an alternative to the RSC described above, another commonly used shipping/containment material is poly-propylene wrap (poly-wrap). Poly-wrap does not maintain its shape and integrity without the influence of the contained product. Therefore, after the poly-wrap material is opened and product is retrieved from the poly-wrap material, the poly-wrap material loses its ability to contain the product initially wrapped in the material making the product remaining in the poly-wrap material difficult to store and retrieve.
The foregoing problem with poly-wrap material is a problem that generally, though not exclusively, occurs to users in their home. Product such as paper towels and toilet tissue can be packaged in large quantities in poly-wrap material. This is a convenience and cost-savings for the consumer. However, it is difficult for consumers to store these large quantities of product in their home because of the shortcomings of the poly-wrap material noted above. After the first few products are removed from the poly-wrap material, the remaining products may spill out from the area where the consumer has stored the initial package requiring the consumer to remove all of the product from the poly-wrap material in order to maintain the storage area in some semblance of organization. At a minimum, the storage area can become unsightly and disorganized once the poly-wrap material loses its ability to adequately contain the product therein.
Therefore, there is a need to design an RSC, that allows a dispensing feature for use in homes, stores, the hotel industry, the commercial restroom facility cleaning industry and other locations and industries that does not suffer the deficiencies noted above.